One Wednesday evening in July 1991, several dozen young women gathered in a pale yellow group house just outside Washington, D.C. They had come to this meeting to talk about “the status of punk rock and revolution.” But they didn’t just discuss a revolution that afternoon: they started one.

Feminist discontent had been building for years. Throughout the Reagan and Bush administrations, social gains of the seventies had been rolled back: abortion rights slashed, “traditional values” brandished, art by women and gay artists demonized and defunded. Sexual assault and discrimination remained pervasive, with young women’s lives and bodies serving as a major battleground of the culture wars.

Girls’ anger was a tinderbox waiting for its spark. The spark was that July meeting, and the roaring fire it lit was the punk feminist movement called Riot Grrrl. Riot Grrrl was a landmark moment in music and an incendiary youth uprising that assured feminism’s relevance into the new millenium. Its political, musical, and social reverberations can still be felt today.

This book is the story of a time when America thought feminism was dead, and feminism seemed to buy into the slacker myths of Generation X, but a generation of noisy girls rose up to prove everybody wrong. It’s the story of a group of young people figuring out—often in dramatic, public, attention-grabbing ways—how to overcome abuse, challenge sexism, and grow up into confident, productive women. It’s a story about starting your own revolution, then struggling to maintain control over it as it travels out into the world.

Above all, it’s a story about being a young misfit groping toward an adulthood that will feel right to you, one you have no reason to believe actually exists other than the fact that if it doesn’t, you’re screwed—a story of being this person, looking for your place in the world, and finally creating it yourself.